Projection: Saturday November 18th 6pm
It is a tradition in modern and contemporary art to challenge the art system by subverting its rules and pushing beyond its boundaries, thereby highlighting problematic aspects of our present. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many artists moved past issues of representation to question what Peter Bürger defined as "the institution of art." In their pursuit of rediscovering the critical dimension of art, they reject its material, conceptual, institutional, and social norms.
The selected works featured as "cases" in this program demonstrate ways in which artists reject the conventional rules of art to shed light on new ways of considering the place of images. Often created during critical moments in social and political life, these works allow the viewer to access a broad range of unsettling experiences, encouraging them to discover new ways of seeing and to develop alternative perspectives on the contemporary world.
Acts of resistance, art as a declaration of survival, attention to issues of representation, and the restoration of images to recover memory are among the ways contemporary art confronts itself. In doing so, art denies its own canons and historical terms, reinventing itself in each work and through the eyes of its viewers. D.W.
Image: Berna Reale